


Chateau Moir

by YoYossarian



Series: Outside Looking In [4]
Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-21
Updated: 2018-05-21
Packaged: 2019-05-09 18:14:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14721123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YoYossarian/pseuds/YoYossarian
Summary: When Joe pulls into the driveway on Wednesday afternoon, Scott's house looks the same, but he has a nagging feeling that something is amiss. He can't quite put his finger on what looks out of place, but he's suddenly sure that there’s been a break in.





	Chateau Moir

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for the wait on this one! I'm still here and still loving your reviews (though I'm terrible at responding to them).

_London, Ontario - April 2018_

Joe Moir has always considered himself a handyman. He and his wife had been homeowners for nearly forty years and in all that time he could count on one hand the number of times he'd needed to call in professional help. He'd installed toilets, hung new kitchen cabinets, and even repaved the driveway, not to mention day-to-day maintenance and, of course, yardwork. He took pride in being able to maintain a comfortable home for his family, though for about twenty of those years it felt like his three sons were hell-bent on destroying the place.

Over the years he taught his boys the basics and enlisted their help on projects around the house. They may have moaned and groaned whenever he proposed a new project, but all three loved working with their hands and over the years it became something that bonded them together. Alma may have given them skating, but he could always say he'd armed them with a few practical home maintenance skills.

And so in 2014, when 26-year-old Scott retired from the sport that had defined most of his life and coped with the transition by actively attempting to destroy his liver (and worrying his mother by refusing to acknowledge it), it was Joe who pointed out the For Sale sign. The house was outside of London, a livable fixer upper on a half acre that needed a little love. Scott must have been looking for direction because a gentle nudge was all it took; two months later he owned the place and though his mother still worried, he began channeling a good chunk of his energy (and God knows he'd always had a lot of energy) into a room-by-room remodel. Joe and Charlie helped out where they could, but between Scott's tour schedule and weekend trips to Winnipeg it was slow going.

The house was still a work in progress when Scott and Tessa announced to their families that they were returning to competition and moving to Quebec. The public announcement was still months away, but by October 2015 the place had become a glorified storage unit for everything Scott didn't move up to Montreal (except his Olympic medals, which he inexplicably left stashed in the sock drawer of the dresser in his childhood bedroom in Ilderton).

As a result, it was Fall 2015 when Joe first took up the mantle of housekeeper/groundskeeper at what they all jokingly referred to as Chateau Moir. Scott was home sporadically, but Joe dropped by at least once a week to mow or rake or turn on the faucets to a drip before a deep freeze so the pipes didn't freeze. He also kept a sharp eye out for broken locks and beer cans, any sign that local teenagers may have realized that the house was unoccupied much more often than not. Joe didn't mind the drive or the extra work; he simply thought of it as one small way he could contribute to The Comeback, one more tiny step towards one final gold medal around the kids’ necks in PyeongChang.

\---

The whole VirtueMoir thing starts off innocently enough, two kids in costumes skating a few laps around the arena hand in hand, the tops of their heads barely visible over the boards.

They’re so young and so small that Joe, though he attends each competition and cheers wholeheartedly from the stands, doesn’t think much of it when they start winning and keep winning. Scott still loves hockey and Tessa still gravitates towards tutus, but time passes and they keep winning and the teams they’re beating are years older, have been paired up for years longer, and suddenly there’s a decision to be made. They’ve been driving the kids to Kitchner-Waterloo before sunrise for a few years now, but if they’re going to keep moving forward they need more ice time and that means it’s time for a change.

It’s a group decision, made around the Virtue’s dining room table by two sets of parents, two coaches, and one (barely) teenage ice dance team that’s tasted victory and will stop at nothing to keep moving forward. In the end there’s no real question. This is what Tessa and Scott want and their parents and coaches support their choice.

Joe thinks that he and Alma have it a little easier. It’s hard to let your child leave home at fifteen, to watch him pack his things and help him move into a stranger’s home over an hour away, but Danny boarded in Kitchner-Waterloo around the same age and so they know what to expect. It will be strange for a few weeks, but Scott will be home on weekends and pretty soon this will all feel normal.

Tessa, though she’s at least as stubbornly determined as Scott, is also two years younger, only thirteen and the first of the Virtue kids to leave home. If it’s hard for Alma and him, Joe knows that this much be ten times as difficult for Kate and Jim. Joe sees Jim pull Scott aside, sees his son nod solemnly, and understands that he’s promising, not for the first time, to look out for Tessa, to keep her safe.

\---

When Joe pulls into the driveway on Wednesday afternoon, Chateau Moir looks the same, but he has a nagging feeling that something is amiss. He can't quite put his finger on what looks out of place, but he's suddenly sure that there’s been a break in.

The neighborhood is safe, but he'd heard news of a few minor break-ins in the past month, teenagers scrounging for electronics and maybe pills, and if that's what they're looking for the best they're gonna get out of Chateau Moir is an old TV and maybe some expired Asprin.

Whoever was here is probably long gone by now, but Joe is approaches the front door quietly just the same. He's kept an eye on the place for over two years and he's going to be pissed if some dumb kids have trashed it after all this time.

He swings the front door open, it doesn’t squeak because he’s taken the time to oil the hinges, and lord knows that was a mistake because maybe if the door had squeaked, maybe the whole debacle could've been avoided all together. But the hinges are oiled and the door doesn’t creak and Joe steps into the kitchen, unheard.

A noise from the living room immediately catches his attention.

Goddamnit. They’re still here. He should probably feel apprehensive about confronting intruders, but he’s pretty ticked off and sure they’re local kids, so he steps into the doorway and peers through into the living room.

\---

If you’d asked Joe Moir in 2006 what kept him up at night, the short answer was ice dance. The slightly longer answer was the shift he'd noticed (how could you not notice, it was designed to be noticed) in Scott and Tessa's programs. He'd been anticipating more complex footwork and lifts, but somewhere along the line (somewhere between Kitchner-Waterloo and Canton) sex had reared its head. 

Never a figure skater himself, Joe had been immersed in the sport of ice dancing when Danny and Sheri started competing and even more so when they’d begun to show real potential, but nothing about Danny’s and Sheri’s partnership had prepared him for Scott and Tessa. 

And he knows, rationally, that this is a part of the sport, that they work with a therapist and an acting coach to ensure that each expression and gesture conveys exactly this, but he also could have lived a long and happy life without ever seeing _that_ look on his teenage son’s face. He does his very best to take in the performances for what they are, but the nagging parental voice in the back of his mind never quite stops wondering if the birds and the bees talk he'd given Scott, years ago now, had been appropriately thorough.

\---

Joe has known Tessa Virtue for over twenty years, watched her grow from a bright, skinny kid into a beautiful, compassionate young woman; she’s the closest thing he has to a daughter.

Which is to say that the very last thing he ever intended to witness in this world is Tessa Virtue on the living room couch, naked as the day she was born, bucking her hips against the mouth of an equally naked man whose face is buried between her thighs and whose dark hair she’s fisting and tugging, a man who is definitely his youngest son.

He must make some kind of startled noise because all of the sudden Tessa’s eyes fly open and she sees him in the doorway and she gasps, a very different noise than she’s been making, which immediately gets Scott’s attention. He glances up at her, brows knit, tracks her gaze across the room, and then half yells, lunges forward, smothering Tessa, covering her nakedness with his own and groping franticly along the top of the couch until he find a throw and tugs it down over them. The whole ordeal lasts about two seconds, but even as Joe spins away and rushes back into the kitchen, he is pretty sure he’s never going to be able to banish the image from his mind. 

“Tomorrow, Scott, your message said you'd be back tomorrow,” he yells over his shoulder, face scarlet, as he hurries right back out the door. If there's a response he doesn't hear it; he's already out the door.


End file.
